Adanga Maru

Adanga Maru starring Jayam Ravi is one script that one will write if
they watch half a dozen of Shankar movies back to back. The heavily used out
theme of hero getting destroyed by mighty villains and then taking revenge on
each one of them is getting repeated here. I am not entirely against using that
idea again, but if there is no element of freshness, themes like this can
easily become unbearably predictable and Adanga Maru is a good example for
that.

So our hero Subash is a police officer who is very aggressive. On the
very beginning of his career itself he sort of helps students to burn down a liquor
store. And after that particular incident, he is given the charge to investigate
a suicide as some students protested saying it was a murder. The investigation of
that case had repercussions that destroyed everything for our hero and how he
takes revenge for all that is what Adanga Maru dealing with.

Some of the dialogues the character Subash says in the last half an hour
of the movie Adanga Maru is actually worth clapping because of the masala angle
to it. I personally found the movie heavily clichéd. When some thriller revenge
movies based on the women safety issues were made in Malayalam, I had written
that I hope people will stop abusing women so that tacky films claiming to be “socially
relevant” won’t happen frequently. Adanga Maru in my opinion is almost eligible
to be in that list of movies. Karthik Thangavel’s writing of the movie lacks grace.
Jayam Ravi has a zillion year old introduction scene. There is an abrupt love
song and a conflict that makes the movie feel like an unimaginative effort.

On the filmmaking side, I would say there is luckily no sidetrack comedy happening here. Looking at the way the film began with that protest scenes and awkward love song, I feared a “friend” character will pop up. Karthik Thangavel as a director has made a decent looking film out of a script that is written lazily. He takes the entire first half to set up the conflict and most of it was predictable and some of it was easily avoidable. The second half also has no grace for a majority of its time and the usage of technology in the movie is way too much. It is almost like whenever Karthik met with a writer’s block on how to make the hero look smart, he will just introduce a technology. I liked some of the dialogues for sure. But for me, every so-called twist in the tale or the next “smart” move of the hero was either easy to predict or the feeling was “yeah, I have seen it before”. The creative parts of this movie are too wildly imaginative. At one point people are killing a rapist by playing a game on their mobile phones and I would say this is a good example of how lack of conviction can kill imaginations written on paper. The cinematography is fine and the music part isn’t that great.

Jayam Ravi is a good choice to play this kind of role. It has almost all the elements an actor like him can pull off. From being romantic, vulnerable and becoming furious Jayam Ravi never feels like a misfit. Raashi Khanna as the female lead has no real significance here except for that love song in the beginning. Sampath as the police chief is perhaps the only other actor who has a noticeable character. The movie has almost 8 people who can be called as antagonists and almost none of them had any sense of depth or agenda. Their blatant statements reminded me of some of the tacky 70’s movies where we had plantation owners wearing blazers and nightgowns with a funny mustache as villains.

For me, Adanga Maru offered nothing new. The predictability was
frequently derailing the movie and the climax portions that had some grip
compared to the other parts of the movie, just wasn’t enough to keep me
interested in this tried and tested idea. When you try to be ambitious with
ideas, conviction in presentation is a key thing.

Rating: 2/5

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Final Thoughts

The predictability was frequently derailing the movie and the climax portions that had some grip compared to the other parts of the movie, just wasn’t enough to keep me interested.

Overall Score The predictability was frequently derailing the movie and the climax portions that had some grip compared to the other parts of the movie, just wasn’t enough to keep me interested.2 /5